DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.34827#0174
I $8 Zz/^ <g/ Z^^7'77^<?77^. cn. xiv.
to the safe admission of the natives into a larger share than
they now possess of the administration of the Government, and
the means which it would put into our hands of influencing the
conduct of the whole population, and of diffusing throughout
it the knowledge and sentiments which we are most desirous to
impart.
' The first of these considerations is one of equal importance
and urgency. I have often endeavoured to show in my minutes
on education that, unless some exertion is made by the Govern-
ment, the natives must soon become less fit than they are at
present for all employments that require any sort of superior
attainment; but, even if they can be kept at the pitch at
which we found them, they must in time be supplemented
by a race possessed of superior advantages, and rapidly increas-
ing in numbers. Even where the employment of natives in
offices of trust is studiously encouraged and enjoined, it has
been found impossible to make full use of them from their bad
habits and ignorance of our modes of proceeding. In proof of
this I need only refer to the early correspondence with the
collectors in the Deckan. On the other hand, the demand for
Europeans in all offices requiring either knowledge or accuracy
is continually forcing itself on our attention. The superior
education of the country-born young men is leading, in the
other presidencies, to the very general employment of them in
all situations to which they can be admitted ; and we may judge,
by the request in which the Madras boys are in this presidency,
whether the demand for them is likely to become stationary,
when the facility of procuring them is increased with their
numbers. If colonisation or any other free ingress of Europeans
to India were allowed, without some previous plan of improving
the natives, the revolution of which I am describing the pro-
gress would be complete, and the natives would by degrees be
removed from every station of power or profit, even of the most
subordinate rank. So complete a proscription of their nation
would raise a dangerous spirit of disaffection among our native
subjects, civil and military; but if it were completed without
producing a destructive explosion, the result would be such as
to the safe admission of the natives into a larger share than
they now possess of the administration of the Government, and
the means which it would put into our hands of influencing the
conduct of the whole population, and of diffusing throughout
it the knowledge and sentiments which we are most desirous to
impart.
' The first of these considerations is one of equal importance
and urgency. I have often endeavoured to show in my minutes
on education that, unless some exertion is made by the Govern-
ment, the natives must soon become less fit than they are at
present for all employments that require any sort of superior
attainment; but, even if they can be kept at the pitch at
which we found them, they must in time be supplemented
by a race possessed of superior advantages, and rapidly increas-
ing in numbers. Even where the employment of natives in
offices of trust is studiously encouraged and enjoined, it has
been found impossible to make full use of them from their bad
habits and ignorance of our modes of proceeding. In proof of
this I need only refer to the early correspondence with the
collectors in the Deckan. On the other hand, the demand for
Europeans in all offices requiring either knowledge or accuracy
is continually forcing itself on our attention. The superior
education of the country-born young men is leading, in the
other presidencies, to the very general employment of them in
all situations to which they can be admitted ; and we may judge,
by the request in which the Madras boys are in this presidency,
whether the demand for them is likely to become stationary,
when the facility of procuring them is increased with their
numbers. If colonisation or any other free ingress of Europeans
to India were allowed, without some previous plan of improving
the natives, the revolution of which I am describing the pro-
gress would be complete, and the natives would by degrees be
removed from every station of power or profit, even of the most
subordinate rank. So complete a proscription of their nation
would raise a dangerous spirit of disaffection among our native
subjects, civil and military; but if it were completed without
producing a destructive explosion, the result would be such as